Author: The Internet Patrol
KeepSafe: Secured, Authenticated Email for the Enterprise
If your company sends email which contains confidential information, or which you’d like to lock down so that it can only be read by an authenticated recipient on the other end, or which you’d simply like to be able to authenticate as really coming from you rather than some great…
If You Have Ever Downloaded Even Just One Movie…
As they promised that they would, the Motion Picture Assocation of America (MPAA) and their members have filed hundreds of lawsuits this week against people who have downloaded, traded, or otherwise pirated commercial movies. Like their brethern in the Recording Industry Assocation of America (RIAA), who filed hundreds of lawsuits…
Perhaps it’s the Users, Rather Than IT, at Fault
Martin Brampton, over at Silicon.com, has a thought-provoking article this week regarding the interplay between IT and business, marketing, and other units. Typically how well a given computer or other technical system functions is laid squarely at the feet of the IT department, for better or worse. However, as Brampton…
RFIDs in Your Passport, State-Installed GPS Tracking in Your Car – Really.
RFIDs embedded in your U.S. passport, encoded with your identity, and able to be read at a distance? GPS devices mandated by law, installed in every single new car, so that the state can monitor your every movement and tax you based on the milage you drive? It’s not 1984, the Sequel. It’s 2004, the Reality. Both of these measures seem likely before the end of 2005.
Internet Messenger Use in the Workplace: A Right or a Responsibility?
Internet instant messenger programs and services, such as AOL Instant Messenger (“AIM”) and Yahoo! Instant Messenger, are as ubiquitous as the telephone, and indeed some may argue are replacing the phone in large part. This can be both a boon and a problem for the workplace. Employees can quickly and…
Portrait of a Spammer
Ever wondered what it was like to be a spammer? Curioius about how they spend their days? How they earn their crust? The recent Virginia trial of notorious mega-spammer Jeremy Jaynes has given the public a first rare look into the habitat and life of the wild spammer. The thirty-year-old…
Single Fathers Treated Like 2nd Class Citizens
I would like to take a moment to talk about a topic which is near and dear to my heart: single fathers, and their children.
Microsoft Claims Rights to All Internet Protocols
In a move blatant and sweeping even for the company perceived by many to be megalomania personified, Microsoft has drafted an Internet protocol licensing agreement which includes essentially every single Internet protocol ever created, several (if not the majority) of which Microsoft has never touched, let alone helped to develop….
If You Have a Lexmark Printer, You May Also Have Lexmark Lx_CATS Spyware
Lx_CATS is a Lexmark printer file, installed by Lexmark, which spies on your printer usage and reports back to the Lexmark mother ship.
Gmail for Outlook and Other POP Clients
Google has announced that their Gmail service is going to start offering POP access to users’ email accounts, meaning that rather than having to log in through Gmail’s web interface, users will be able to download their Gmail to their own computer using Outlook, Eudora, or whatever other email client…
Transferring Domains No Longer Requires Consent – Registrars Advise That You Lock Your Domain
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has put into place a new rule which says that if a request to transfer an Internet domain is made, and there is no response made denying the transfer within 5 days, the transfer will be approved and made. That means…
New MyDoom Worm Has No File, Just a URL, Exploits I.E. Hole
The newest version of MyDoom does not even have a file attached to it, making it look even less suspect, and less worm- or virus-like. Instead, it exploits one of the more recently discovered holes in Internet Explorer, through which clicking on a URL can cause a file to be…
Microsoft Takes Sender I.D.’s Case to the FTC Authentication Summit
Despite the miserable failure suffered by Microsoft’s efforts to win support for their Sender I.D. email authentication system, with such august institutions the Apache project, the Debian project, and even the IETF’s authentication working group all roundly rejecting Sender I.D. on technical as well as legal and moral grounds, and…
Imagine if Email Worked Like RSS
Now here’s an interesting idea. Imagine if email worked like RSS. Your email program would aggregate a list of new message subjects and senders for you, and if you wanted to read them, it would go retrieve them from the sender’s site. As Todd Marshall, the developer of this version…
Is BitTorrent Traffic Going to Bring Down the Internet?
A British web statistics analysis firm has said that file sharing program BitTorrent is responsible for an astonishing 35% of all traffic on the Internet right now. Leaving aside the question of how much of that massive activity involves the illegal swapping of files (BitTorrent, like Napster and Kazaa before…
